Third World Type Death Hits Home

On Saturday, James Brooks asked his uncle to take him grocery shopping because his car was not working. There, he spent $46 on meat, canned goods, produce, milk and orange juice.

"He was big on milk and orange juice for the boys," said Brooks' uncle. "He'd mention those TV commercials that talked about milk doing a body good."

But on Monday, when police found Brooks' 4-month-old daughter starved to death in the family's Joliet apartment, there was no milk, no orange juice, no baby food. There were only two packages of bologna and a loaf of bread, said Joliet Detective Gerald Gear.

The only thing in little Tavanisha Brooks' stomach, according to an autopsy report, was mucus. At her death, she weighed only 6 pounds 8 ounces-a scant 14 ounces more than she weighed when she was born. A child her age should weigh 13 or 14 pounds, according to experts.

"There was nothing to the child," said Gear. "It reminded me of pictures I saw of starving children in Ethiopia."

Tavanisha became the 60th child under the age of 15 slain in the Chicago area this year, authorities said. But hers is the first case in which parents have been charged with murder for allegedly starving a child to death.

Brooks and Katrina Vincent, the child's mother, were poor-but not too poor to buy food, according to neighbors and family members.

Vincent received a monthly Social Security check of $422, as well as public aid and food stamps, relatives said. When Vincent left her children at a neighbor's to be baby-sat, she always took food along for them.

And Brooks, father of two of Vincent's five children, held a $6.85-an-hour job cutting cabinet parts until he was fired three weeks ago, relatives said.

"I knew she was quite small," said Tavanisha's great-grandmother, Zelma Brooks. She discussed the case Thursday while sitting in a Will County courtroom, awaiting a brief status hearing for Katrina Vincent, 20, and Brooks, 23, who were charged with first-degree murder.

"I asked Katrina, `Why was the baby so small? Are you feeding it properly?' She said, `Yes, every two hours.' It didn't dawn on me that she wasn't getting food. There seemed to be plenty of food in the house," Zelma Brooks said.

Questions had been raised before about whether children in the household were getting enough to eat. The state Department of Children and Family Services investigated the family in March after receiving reports that Tavanisha's brother, now 18 months old, was severely underweight.

The couple were referred to a social worker and kept one counseling appointment, according to police, but did not return.

DCFS would not comment Thursday on Tavanisha's death or on the March incident, citing state law guarding the confidentiality of the agency's investigations. DCFS spokeswoman Deborah Folga said the agency was investigating Tavanisha's case.

DCFS has taken custody of the 18-month-old and his two stepbrothers, ages 4 and 5. Relatives said they moved in with a great-grandmother in Lockport. A fifth child lives with his father.

Starvation among children in the U.S. may be a bigger problem than previously thought, experts said. This year, just in Chicago, two children have been found nearly starved to death.

In one of them, a 5-year-old Chicago boy was taken to a hospital on Thanksgiving Day weighing only 18 pounds-the typical weight of a 1-year-old. His plight led to felony charges of cruelty to a child against his mother and her boyfriend. That case was pending.

It also led to a recommendation by the inspector general of DCFS to suspend or possibly fire three department investigators who had visited the boy's home in response to abuse complaints, but who took no action other than to recommend that the mother seek counseling. A decision on punishment was pending.

Although precise statistics on child starvation do not exist, up to 12 percent of the nation's children under 12 may not get enough to eat, according to the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based group that studies hunger.

In Illinois, 2,444 cases investigated last year by DCFS-or 7 percent of all neglect cases in the state-involved malnourished children. Many of them were diagnosed as "failure-to-thrive" cases.

Vincent and Brooks' neighbors in their apartment building expressed amazement Thursday about the child's death and the charges against her parents.

"I thought (Vincent) was a real nice mother," said Katherine Patterson, who lived across the hall from the couple. "I never heard anything as far as kids hollering or screaming. That's why I'm terribly shocked."

Before Tavanisha's birth, Vincent underwent an ultrasound that revealed that her child would be a girl.